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Monday, March 23, 2009

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

March 15 is a fateful day. You all remember Shakespeare's "et tu, Brute?" right? Well, March 15 was the day that I fell down in a big way with my 2009 fiber resolution. I don't think I've ever explicitly stated my resolution, which was "minimize fiber acquisitions." Actually, it went more like "see how long you can go without buying any new yarn or spinning fiber." For two and a half months I was doing really well! I was knitting from stash yarn (there is quite a lot of that, as you can probably guess) and had not brought any new fiber of any sort into the apartment. And then the DH and I went to New England to see family this past week. On our drive up the Maine coast we stopped by Purl Diva in Brunswick and I got into a bit of trouble. Ok, a lot of trouble. Four skeins of sock yarn and one skein of malabrigo laceweight. To be fair, three of the sock skeins were for gifts for other people (and more importantly, were gifts that could not have been made with stash yarn) and thus fell within one of the exceptions to my fiber resolution. So the single skein of sock yarn and the little bit of laceweight for me isn't too bad a fall, right? Unfortunately, my camera stayed in my bag during the entire trip so pictures of the new acquisitions will have to wait until I get back home and can pull the skeins out of the checked luggage.

Before I forget, Purl Diva is a gorgeous shop! Amazing yarn selection, great atmosphere, welcoming owner, you name it. I'll definitely be back on my next trip to Maine. (End of shameless plug, but really - great shop and you should definitely go if you are in the area.)

Just in case you thought I was going to ramble on without offering any distractions, here's a quick glimpse of my latest spinning project:

640 yards of approximately aran weight Corriedale/silk that I picked up at the Midwest Fiber & Folk festival last July.

Want more?

Even more?

Yes, I'm shameless and in love with my new yarn. I'm thinking of doing a top-down basic raglan with some sort of a cable running down the center front. A staghorn cable is at the top of my list right now but I'll pull out my Barbara Walker volumes and rummage around to see what else might look good.

I also officially finished Cluaranach a week or so ago. By "actually finished," I mean blocked and snipped the ends. I finished the knitting part of this project back in January but had been dragging my feet on the blocking. Even with blocking wires (and those are certainly a lifesaver), blocking is still quite a chore.

I'm thrilled with the result (although you probably can't see much in these pictures with either too much light or not enough). The yarn is a 70/30 merino/tencel blend that I spun up last spring. Now that it has been blocked, the yarn is absolutely stunning. Modeling shots soon.

To close out, I'll leave you with a pic of my newest pair of socks: Pomatomus. I had been planning to knit up a pair of Scottish Kilt Hose from Folk Socks with some Shibui sock yarn (color: peacock) and then ran into some major issues with color pooling. After frantically trying to save the kilt hose, I gave up and switched the yarn over to Pomatomus. I'm wearing the finished product right now and I'm happy to say that they looked very fetching going through airport security.